The Atlantis Plague (37 page)

“Where’d you learn boating? You just pick it up?”

“From my father. He used to take me sailing when I was a kid.”

“You talk to him much?”

David shifted awkwardly on the bed. “No. He died when I was young.”

Kate opened her mouth to speak, but David cut her off. “Don’t worry about it. It was a long time ago. ’83. Lebanon. I was seven.”

“The bombing at the Marine barracks?”

David nodded. His eyes drifted over to the Immari uniform and to the silver wings of a lieutenant colonel. “He was thirty-seven and already a lieutenant colonel. He might have made brigadier general or even higher. That was my dream as a kid. I had this image in my mind of standing in a Marine Corps uniform with a general’s star on my shoulder. It’s funny, I can still see the picture of myself that I held in my mind for so long. It’s amazing how clear your dreams are when you’re a kid and how complicated life gets after that. How a single ambition turns into a hundred desires and details—most of which are about what you want and who you want to be.”

Kate took her eyes away from him, then turned in the bed and lay beside him, looking away.

Was it her way of giving him space? David didn’t know, but he liked having her beside him, how her soft skin felt on his, her warm body heating the places where they touched.

“The day of the funeral, my mother came home and placed the folded-up flag over the mantel. It sat there for the next twenty years, in a triangle-shaped dark wood case with a few too many coats of varnish and a glass door. Beside it she placed two pictures: a headshot of him in his uniform and a picture of them together, somewhere tropical, somewhere they were happy. The house was filled with people that day. They kept saying the same things. I went into the kitchen, got out the biggest black trash bag I could find and filled it with my toys—anything that was a soldier, a tank, or even remotely connected to the military. Then I went in my room and played Nintendo for about the next three years.”

Kate gently kissed his head where his forehead met his hairline. “Zelda?”

“I got the Triforce like two million times.” He looked over at her and smiled. “Then, at some point, I got really interested in history. I read everything I could get my hands on. Military history in particular. Especially European and Middle Eastern history. I wanted to know how the world got to be the way it is. Or maybe I thought being a history teacher would be the safest job in the world, the furthest place on the planet from an actual battlefield. But when 9/11 happened, the only thing I wanted to do was be a soldier. It’s like when my world was turned upside down, I wanted revenge, but I also wanted to do the one thing I thought I would be good at—what I was destined to do all along but afraid to do. Maybe a man can’t escape his fate. No matter what you do, you can’t change what you really are, what’s deep down inside you, supposedly dead and buried, but driving you all along.”

Kate didn’t say anything, and David appreciated that. She simply pressed her body next to his and buried her face in the space between his head and his shoulder.

Sometime later, David felt her breathing slow, and he knew she was asleep.

He kissed her forehead.

As his lips released, he realized just how exhausted he was. Mentally, from discussing Martin’s notes; physically, from his time with Kate; and emotionally, from telling her the things he had never told anyone.

He moved the gun out from the pillow and laid it next to him, where he could get to it more easily. He glanced at the door. He would hear it if it opened. He would have time if anyone came for them. He would just close his eyes for a second.

CHAPTER 71

When David opened his eyes, he knew he was back in the Mediterranean villa. Kate stood beside him. An arched wooden door loomed at the end of the hall. On their right, two open doors flooded the narrow space with light.

David knew the doors and the rooms beyond—he had seen Kate there.

This is her dream. I’m in it
, David thought.

Kate walked to the end of the hall and reached for the door.

“Don’t,” David said.

“I have to. The answers are behind it.”

“Don’t do it, Kate—”

“Why?”

David was scared, and here in the dream, he knew why. “I don’t want anything to change. I don’t want to lose you. Let’s stay here, where we are.”

“Come with me.” She opened the door and light consumed the corridor.

He raced after her, bounding through the door—

David sat up in bed, panting, fighting for air.

He had thrown Kate off of him, but it hadn’t awoken her.

He rolled her head to face him. “Kate!”

Sweat poured off of her. But her pulse was faint. She was burning up. And she was unconscious.

What do I do? Get one of the doctors? I can’t trust them.
Terror—of a magnitude he’d never felt before—gripped him. He pulled her close to him.

To Kate’s surprise, the door led her outside.

She turned to look at the door, but—a massive ship towered above her. She stood on a beach, and the ship spread out on the shore. Somehow Kate knew what it was—the
Alpha Lander
. What the primitive humans on this world would call Atlantis.

She looked down. She wore an environmental suit.

The sky above her was dark, ash-filled. At first she thought it was night, but she saw a dim sun directly overhead, struggling to break through the ash that blanketed the clouds.

Impossible
, Kate thought. This is the Toba Catastrophe, seventy thousand years ago.

A voice echoed in her helmet. “Last recorded life signs are just beyond the ridge, bearing two-five degrees.”

“Copy,” she heard herself say as she set off at a brisk pace across the ash-covered beach.

Beyond the ridge, she saw them: black bodies stacked on the ground from the valley all the way to the mouth of a cave.

She crossed the distance and entered the cave.

The infrared sensors in her suit confirmed it: they were all dead.

She had almost given up hope when a single sliver of crimson lit up her display. A survivor. She moved closer.

Behind her, she heard footsteps. She turned to find a large male, an incredible physical specimen. He barreled toward her with something in his hand.

She gripped her stun baton, but the male broke off his charge. He collapsed next to the female and handed her something: a rotting piece of flesh. She tore into it wildly.

Kate saw it now. The female carried another life sign. An infant. Two hundred forty-seven local days since inception.

The male collapsed back against the wall of the cave. Had he been the chief of his tribe? Perhaps. He had led his people here—to the sea—where the fish could sustain them. But it was too late. These two would die here, in this cave, and it would be the end of their species.

My species too
, Kate thought.
They are my people, maybe the last of them. With one genetic change, I can save them. I can’t watch them die. I won’t.

Before she knew what was going on, she had hoisted both hominins onto her shoulders. The suit’s exoskeleton and computerized weight distribution bore their bulk with ease. They were too weak to fight back.

On the ship, she rushed them to the lab.

Their species was too young for a full genetic modification. That would kill them. She made a decision: to give them the genetic precursor. That would save them. But it would cause problems. She would be here to help them, to guide them, to fix the issues. She had all the time in the world, in the universe. She would raise them. Full activation would come later, when they were ready.

“What are you doing?” a man’s voice called from behind her.

It was her partner. Her mind raced. What could she tell him? “I’m…”

He stood there in the doorway, light spilling into the lab from behind him. Kate couldn’t see his face. She had to find out who he was. She stood, and walked toward him, but still she couldn’t see his face.

Kate knew he was waiting for her answer.
I have to tell him something. I’ll use the truth, but spin it.

“I’m conducting an experiment,” she said, just as she reached him. She grabbed his shoulder, but the light still hid his face.

David wiped another sheet of sweat off Kate’s face.
That’s it, I have to get a doctor. I won’t let her die in my arms.

He set her down on the bed, but she grabbed him and inhaled sharply. She gulped mouthfuls of air, and her eyes fluttered wide open.

David searched her face, trying to understand. “What the hell happened? I ran through the door, but—”

“I did it,” she gasped.

“What?”

“Toba. Seventy thousand years ago. I saved the dying humans.”

She’s delirious
, David thought. “I’m going to get the doctors.”

She gripped his forearm tightly, and shook her head. “I’m fine. I’m not crazy. These aren’t just dreams. They’re memories.” She was finally getting her breath back. “
My
memories.”

“I don’t—”

“In 1979, I wasn’t just
born
from the tube—I was
resurrected
. There’s so much more going on here than we realized.”

“You’re—”

“I’m the scientist that gave us the Atlantis Gene. I’m one of the Atlanteans.”

PART III:
THE ATLANTIS EXPERIMENT

CHAPTER 72

Somewhere near Isla de Alborán
Mediterranean Sea

David tried to process what Kate had said. “You’re—”

“An Atlantean,” Kate insisted.

“Look, I…”

“Just listen, okay?” Kate had regained her breath.

A knock came from the door.

David grabbed his gun. “Who is it?”

“Kamau. We’re T minus one hour, David.”

“Understood. Anything else?”

A pause.

“No, sir.”

“I’ll be out shortly,” David called to the door. He turned to Kate.

“What the hell is going on?”

“I remember now, David. It’s like a flood, like a dam has broken. Memories. Where to start—”

“How do you have the memories?”

“The tubes—the Immari thought they were healing pods. That’s only half of what they are. They heal, but their main purpose is to resurrect Atlanteans.”

“Resurrect?”

“If an Atlantean dies, they return in the tubes, with all their memories, just as they were before they died. The Atlantis Gene—it’s more than what we think it is. It’s a remarkable piece of biotechnology. It causes the body to emit radiation, a sort of subatomic download of data. Memories, cell structure, it’s all collected and replicated.”

David stood there, unsure of what to say.

“You don’t believe me.”

“No,” he said. “I believe you. Trust me, I believe you. I believe everything you just said is true.” His thoughts drifted to his own resurrection, his rebirth, both in Antarctica and Gibraltar. He sensed that she needed him. She was going through something he couldn’t begin to understand. “If anyone in the world believes you, it’s me. You heard my story—my resurrection. But let’s walk through it. First things first: how could you have an Atlantean’s memories?”

Kate wiped the sweat from her face. “In Gibraltar, the ship was damaged, almost destroyed. The last thing I remember was going back into the ship. During the explosions, I was knocked out, and my partner… he grabbed me. I don’t know what happened after. I must have died. But I didn’t resurrect. The ship must have turned it off—either because it was damaged or there was no escape. Or maybe he turned it off—my partner.” Kate shook her head. “I can almost see his face… He saved me. But… somehow I didn’t return in the tube. In 1919, my father put Helena Barton—my mother—in the tube. I was born in 1979. The tube is programmed to bring the Atlantean back to the moment it died. It grows a fetus, implants the memories, then matures the fetus to the standard age.”

“Standard age?”

“About my age now—”

“The Atlanteans don’t age?”

“They do, but you can disable aging with a few simple genetic changes. Aging is just programmed cell death. But it’s taboo for the Atlanteans to disable aging.”